Most newspaper reporters covering government in the nineteenth century trained their eyes on Congress, a habit that started to shift in the 1890s, when Washington Evening Star reporter William Price was assigned to cover the White House full time. A decade later, many national papers were opening Washington bureaus staffed by reporters who specialized in covering the government, including the president.
Media studies scholar Stephen Ponder argues that William McKinley, inaugurated as president in 1897, laid the groundwork for Roosevelt’s later efforts to fully bring the press into the White House. In part, the McKinley administration standardized various press protocols and routines involved in managing the press corps—holding somewhat regular briefings, for example, and carefully timing White House announcements. McKinley also gave journalists a dedicated space inside the White House; it was no more than a corridor table on the second floor, but it was all theirs.
When Roosevelt moved into the White House in 1901, following McKinley’s assassination, he soon called a meeting with reporters from three wire services. This was, Juergens writes, “an unusual request in an era when presidents almost never sat down with working reporters.”
“I shall be accessible to [you],” the president told the reporters, seated around the cabinet table. “I shall keep [you] posted, and trust to [your] discretion as to publication.”
What drove Roosevelt to diverge from his predecessors in his press dealings? For one thing, argues Juergens, Roosevelt knew American journalism had “entered the age of the reporter.” Journalists built their reputations by landing compelling “scoops,” and daily newspapers were becoming commonplace. The president was keenly aware that he could control the “version of truth that went out to the public.”
Roosevelt’s attempt to manipulate coverage of his presidency wasn’t just about his policies; it was also about controlling his image. According to Greenberg, Roosevelt had a “zest for the spotlight,” and philosopher John Dewey once observed, “One cannot think of him except as part of the public scene, performing on the public stage.” The press, says historian Lewis L. Gould, helped Roosevelt solidify his status as the “first modern celebrity president” amid the proliferation of newspapers, magazines, radio, and the advent of photography.
Roosevelt was, writes historian Edward Saveth, “a relatively rich man at a time when men of wealth were under increasing public scrutiny.” He took action to disassociate himself from this widely-held perception and portrayed himself as “patrician proving himself, in encounters with bullies, bears and frontier flotsam—all sorts of derring-do including rifles at ten paces.” And he publicized it all in print.